Does work experience help to become a medical specialist?

In the Netherlands, students who want to become a medical specialist have to enrol in a training program which is in limited supply. During the search for a position as trainee (or "junior medical specialist"), they may accept a temporary job as a medical assistant. We use a micro dataset to investigate whether such work experience increases the probability of becoming junior medical specialist. To deal with se-lectivity, we simultaneously model the transitions from unemployment to trainee, from unemployment to medical assistant, from medical as-sistant to trainee and from medical assistant to unemployment. We find that work experience helps to become a medical specialist.